Your Champion Website is Your Primary Online Marketing Tool

Ajax McKerral

2015-09-14T12:03:02+00:00

Globally, there are almost 2.8 billion people online, or 39% of the world’s population. In Australia there are over 18 million people online, or 83% of the population (as of 2014). And it’s only going to get bigger. If you want to grow your business you need to get your message to your target market. Where […]

Globally, there are almost 2.8 billion people online, or 39% of the world’s population. In Australia there are over 18 million people online, or 83% of the population (as of 2014). And it’s only going to get bigger.

If you want to grow your business you need to get your message to your target market. Where are your target market? Well, regardless of your niche, at a bare minimum, 80% of them are online.

Your website is your essential marketing tool

With over 80% of the Australian population online, your website is your essential marketing tool. Yes, you need a Facebook Page, Twitter account, LinkedIn profile and Instagram, or whatever other social network works for you. But you will never have full control over those services. Facebook changes their terms of service all the time, and how your posts reach your audience. They may go out of business or another newer social network may come along that eclipses them all.

The one place that you have full control over is your website. This is the place where you can control the user flow, create a compelling value proposition and convert users into customers.

Your website is too important to leave in the hands of your website developer

To get a Champion Website that works for you, you need to be fully invested in the strategy and process of developing and maintaining you website.

This means that you need to work collaboratively and pro-actively with your website developers. You need to take responsibility for planning and managing the site. for your website to clearly communicate what your business is about, and the value proposition for your customers, your developer needs to understand your business.

Once you get these three things clear it will be easier to build your website, as you will have a good understanding of who you are targeting, what your offer is and how you are going to find them, reach them and sell them.

A Champion Website is an essential part of your online marketing

Before we go much further it’s best that we consider a few marketing concepts. Websites have become an essential ingredient in any businesses marketing activity. Websites have advantages over other media like radio and TV in that:

You can get an interaction with people visiting your site

You can get real time and historical statistics about visits to your site

You can craft content that attracts your target market

This is in stark contrast to radio and TV, where campaigns and their outcomes are harder to measure and rely on secondary data to judge whether they are successful.

Your Champion Website is your marketing “special sauce”. But before we jump into discussing how best to build one, lets get some marketing terms straight, and put together an online marketing plan.

Who is your target market?

The better we define who we are trying to reach, the better we will be able to reach them. The more we understand how they tick, what moves them and what their pain is, the better we are able to solve their problems. How we define the group of people who could benefit from our product or service is our target market.

So how do we define our target market? You probably already have a good idea of who your target market is. We can define our target market by things like:

Age

Gender

Location (which country, city, suburb, street do they live in)

Interests (sports, craft, kittens, finance…)

Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram)

What websites do they visit?

Social causes and political parties

What music do they listen to?

Defining our target market enables us to craft our message for those people online. If we can drill down and tightly define the segment of the market that most need our products and services, then we will be more able to reach them.

When you’ve finished this list you will have a better idea about your target market, where they hang out and how to reach them. This will directly influence how you build your website and the words that you use on your pages.

You can use this handy tool to define your target market now

First, put in your details

Your name*

FirstLast

Your email*

Your Business Name*

Your website

Your target market

Use these questions to define who your target market is, where they are, and what they do.

Is your target market

Individuals

Businesses

Gender

Male

Female

Age

Under 10

11-17

18-24

25-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

65 or Above

Prefer Not to Answer

Personal partnership status

Single

Defacto

Married

Divorced

Widowed

Other

Education Level

University post-graduate (Masters, PhD)

University Graduate (Bachelor or Diploma)

TAFE graduate (Certificate, Diploma)

High school graduate

Other

Employment status

Full time

Part time

Self employed

Not employed

Looking for work

Income (per annum)

Less than $18,200

$18,201 – $37,000

$37,001 – $80,000

$80,001 – $180,000

$180,001+

Location

This can be things like: Country, City, Suburb, on Facebook 20% of their day

Interests

What are your target market's Interests? This could be things like: cats, football, wine tasting, etc.

List 5 websites your target market like to visit

Website 1

Website 2

Website 3

Website 4

Website 5

Website comments

Why do your target market visit these websites? What do they do there? What does it say about them?

Social networks

What social networks do your target market use?

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Instagram

Tumbler

YouTube

Reddit

LinkedIn

Other

Social network comments

What do your target market do on social media? How much time do they spend on respective social media sites and apps. What does this say about them?